I just got back from a 2 day M-school at the BMW Performance Center in Greer, SC (outside of Greenville, SC). Wednesday was my arrival day, the school was Thursday the 30th and Friday October 1st. I thought you guys and gals might like some information. The bottom line is it was a LOT of fun.
I arrived late due to an unexpected trip. Normally you should arrive before dinner so you can have your nice dinner at the Greenville Marriott. The price (more than $3000 if you are not a BMW CCA member but less than $3000 if you are smarter and join the BMW CCA and get the 15% discount (which would be several years membership cost) includes 2 nights at the Marriott, two breakfasts at the Marriott (all you pay is the tip), and dinner on the arrival night at the Marriott. It is a special menu but there are plenty of option. Dinner at the Marriott does not include alcohol if it is like PCD. Two lunches at the Performance center and 1 dinner at the performance center are also included and that one includes wine or beer (or both). All the food is good.
You also get a bunch of "goodies" with the 2 day school. You get a nice helmet, a jacket, a polo shirt, a t-shirt, a ball cap (special, only available by taking the school) and a few miscellaneous items I am forgetting. And a certificate.
Agenda is arrive the night before and then get shuttled to the Performance center around 8 in the morning. Most of the schedules are Friday/Saturday (Thursday arrival) but mine was Wednesday arrival drive Thursday & Friday. I had tons of vacation so I picked this one. I think the more typical Friday/Saturday might be a bit better, however, because during the week, there is a little competition with Performance Center Deliveries for the track (am only). They do not do Saturday deliveries at the Performance Center so I think you would have the track to yourself. It was no big issue but I think we got a little longer lecture in the morning on the second day to let them clear out a little.
OK, not the good stuff. You drive M3s, M5s, and M6s. I thought the M6s were prettiest but the M3s were the most fun to drive. I had not driven any of them before and I was impressed. The brakes are probably more impressive than the engines, if that is possible. When you are rocketing down the straight at 100+ mph, it is hard to wait until your brake point even though you know from your last lap that it will stop. But it does, every time.
We started each day with about 1.5 hours in a classroom and then spent the rest of the day driving. I got tired from all the driving and I was typical. I was not tired of driving, but my legs were tired and sometimes my forearms. Some people even pulled off (they tell you where in advance) for rest. I got a little slower but kept driving. On the second day you are in helmets most of the time and I was sweating until I figured out to turn the AC down to 62 degrees. The instructors recommend this because the BMW will turn the AC off itself when you go full on the throttle. So you loose no power.
There would normally be 15 students divided into 3 groups of 5. The instructors are all race car drivers and great. They will bug you but they are EXTREMELY polite and nice about it. They want you to go fast. You drive most of the time in M mode which will allow you to get the car loose and if you do it a lot they will say something but they want you to go fast. I know from experience that you can even get it sideways in M-mode.
We had only 12 students so we were 3 groups of 4. And one guy in my group quit on the second day about half way through so we were down to 3 people. More driving time for the rest of us. I don't know if it was business stuff or what.
Each of the sub-groups does something a little different each session. Each session lasts an hour or so with a break in between, which you will need. You spend a surprising amount of energy trying to stay in position in the car and drive it. They mark the turn in points and the apexes and the braking zones. My biggest problem was staying wide for the turn ins. If I braked early enough, I wanted to go directly to the corner. The problem with that is it is far better to go into the corner slow than to come out of it slower than you can. If you turn in early, you have too small a radius coming out so you have to go slower. They teach late apexes for the highest possible corner exit speed. I got better but still have lots of room for improvement.
The first day you practice individual corners and groups of corners. The second day you use most of the track (maybe all of it if your second day is Saturday). You will go over 100 mph on both days. It's a blast.
The M5 and M6 are the older single clutch automated manuals and the M3s are DCTs. You are in M mode so it shifts hard and right now. I love my manual but for track use, the DCT is better (faster). They all have paddles which I had not used before but adapted to OK. When I started loosing concentration a little I would sometimes be in too tall a gear. You can still go pretty fast like this in a M car but it does not leap from corner to corner like it does when you are in the maximum power rpm range.
You also do wet skid pad exercises. First is understeer/oversteer. You purposely put the car in understeer to recover from it. Then you do oversteer. If you do it quick enough, you get to try hanging the rear end out. I only got about 1/4 the way around. I can do this easily in snow, it is harder on a wet track.
It looked like the other members of my group spent the whole time on oversteer correcting. Understeer is easy, get off the gas is about all you do. Oversteer is a touch harder and if you haven't driven in slick conditions, it could be a bit of a new experience. On the track, you mostly get understeer because that is how the car is engineered. After you warm up this way you do "rat races" later in the day. That is two people on the pad trying to go faster than each other. You start out 180 degrees apart so you are trying to catch each other. I was the slowest in my group of 3. Disappointing but it's a real race and you have to accept your skill level is what it is. The last thing our group of 3 did was a figure 8 on the same skid pad. You were timed for both fastest lap and total cumulative time in 10 laps. We did two sets of 10 laps and then 5 extras that didn't count. Most of our laps were in the 15 second+ range. Some as slow as 17, and 14s seemed to be the quickest anybody did. I had the lowest cumulative of my subgroup, I had the most sub-14 second laps, and I had the second through about 10th fastest lap
.
So I got the hang of it - which I did not in the rat race at all. They were about the same thing but I just never got the feel of the wet track the first time, I did the second. Wet is totally different from dry. You have to be gentle.
If you haven't seen this track it is a blast. You have one big corner you take at maybe 70 mph and a short straight you can go over 100. But there are also corners you have to take down around 30 mph. Great opportunity to learn.
Jim